


the prophet's song

by ApprenticeofDoyle



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe literally, Angst, Domesticity, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Guilt, Historical References, M/M, Protective!Crowley, WIP, badass!Aziraphale, book and tv fusion of a sort, drama bc that's what all these fools thrive on, in any universe, ineffable husbands, on temporary hiatus, or is it???, pining as well, set in the 90s as per the novel, yes i actually have written angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 04:50:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticeofDoyle/pseuds/ApprenticeofDoyle
Summary: “Erhm,” Crowley says. He blinks one more time.  “Aziraphale?”He looks up further from Aziraphale’s position on top of him, and his mouth goes dry. Clutched in the angel’s hand is a blazing sword, poised at such an angle to bear down in a strike directly across his neck.I think I’m missing something,Crowley thinks, somewhat stunned.*    *    *Crowley is torn from London six months after the Apocawasn't, and thrown into a world that's very different than his own: a world on the brink of End Times, with its own prophecy--and a world without an Arrangement.





	1. let all your treasure make you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeadHero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadHero/gifts).



> i wrote this as a gift for my dearest friend and GO partner in crime back at Christmas, but got distracted with Star Wars-- looks like the Good Omens TV show awakened something again in me. (Naturally.) I wanted to share with everyone else, though, awash as I am in GO content, so here we are!! Characterizations and settings are based off the book, not the show, so there'll be some differences, but probably some bleed over too (and you're welcome to envision David and Michael in their roles, however, as well as the rest of the cast.)

**chapter one**

 

_London, 1991_

" _Really_ , my dear.”

“I’m sorry, it was _not_ to my taste.” Crowley points a finger. “And I know you hated it too, don’t even try to pretend otherwise.”

Aziraphale sighs as he sits down on the side of the bed, slipping off his scuffed Oxfords. Crowley watches him with amusement, wondering not for the last time why Aziraphale doesn’t simply miracle the shoes from his feet, mouth twitching up in a smile when it again occurs just how easily Aziraphale forgets his angelic abilities in favor of human motion.

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale hedges, “It was certainly. Erhm. Unique?”

“The pieces were ugly, angel. Ugly. The entire gallery was a garish eyesore and a waste of a perfectly nice evening. I can’t believe we ended up seeing that instead of a proper show.”

“We can always go tomorrow.”

Crowley huffs, lifting his legs—shoes and all—and dropping heavily on the bed. Aziraphale tuts halfheartedly at him for the manners, and with the obliging snap of Crowley’s fingers, the shoes are gone. Admiring as he may be of the human condition, he’s not going to forget the few perks of his demonhood anytime soon. “But it was only tonight they were going to perform _Taming_ with the roles genderbent! Once in a decade opportunity, wasted. All for that neon, retina-scalding tripe.”

“They weren’t _all_ terrible.” Aziraphale purses his mouth, casting about for a decent example. “I thought the piece with the...erhm...the letters and numbers and such, was quite interesting.”

“It was _code,_ angel. Computer code. You know-”

“I _do_ know what computer code is, Crowley,” Aziraphale says pointedly, lifting an eyebrow. Crowley smirks, and the other brow goes up beside it. “I possess a computer and use it regularly, if you remember.”

“Right, well, all the same, I didn’t like it. I mean, just printed symbols and letters glued on to a canvas?” Crowley waggles his fingers in the air. “Ooh, technology is scary and everywhere. _Bore._ ”

“People are afraid of what they don’t understand, my dear. Technology is just another—another great world of unknowns for humanity to stress over.” Aziraphale pauses, fussing with the buttons on his cardigan. Finally, bothered by the effort, he waves a hand and dons his evening clothing: worn, soft white pajamas, periwinkle-striped, common bedwear popular some forty years prior. Comfortable, just as Aziraphale liked it, and as Crowley liked him. “Can’t say I blame them, either—the stuff that’s being done with new technology today has my side quite concerned.”

“My side thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Crowley says, with a low chuckle. “Lying online is so _easy._ Temptation is child's play when there’s anonymity to keep people shameless. Soon we’ll barely have to lift a finger to claim souls, all we’ll need to do is sit and watch them press big red buttons.” He shakes his head, the smile fading from his face. “Pretty soon they won’t need either of us to destroy the world, angel.”

“Don’t count them short, my dear,” Aziraphale says, consolingly. “They’re also quite good at building things.” Crowley makes a reluctant, allowing noise, the edges of his mouth digging new caves, and the angel reaches over where he’s tucked himself thoroughly into bed—as if he could feel the February chill in any considerable way—and kneads the furrow from Crowley’s brow with a finger.

“Enough of that,” Aziraphale says gently. Crowley’s eyes close at the touch, sighing heavily and drooping where he sits against Aziraphale’s sturdy frame.

“I told you you’d regret my moving in sooner or later, angel,” Crowley says. He hides how much he means it within tease, but it’s a lame effort. After just a few months of seeing Aziraphale every day, every other hour, he’s going soft. A part of him is somewhat ashamed to admit this, but that part is dwindling increasingly with time, has been dwindling even before the Apocadidn't, and will likely soon succumb to a certain angelic influence that he's had little resistance to from the beginning.

“I don't know what you mean,” said influence hums, reaching for the cup of tea at his elbow and sipping at it. The angel sucks in a light breath as if burned, making a small noise of disapproval, and a miracle later, the piping tea is cooled to a more suitable temperature. The expression that crosses the angel's face as he takes a proper taste is one that Crowley is happy to covet.

“My melancholy,” Crowley explains, with careful nonchalance. “Terrible quality in a roommate, I know, but now you have no choice but to witness my moods first hand. No escaping it when we share room and board, angel, so you'll just have to get used to it.”

Aziraphale stills, frowning over his cup, and without a gesture it is vanished into the air. Crowley's chest tightens as Aziraphale looks at him, brow furrowed and eyes too knowing—his tone, he realizes now, was just a touch too casual. Rookie mistake.

A beat and the brow smooths, and Aziraphale’s moving to wind an arm around his waist, pulling him close. Crowley lets him, grateful for the touch, the grounding, heated press of the angel's body against his.

“That _Duke_ is still searching around for you,” Aziraphale sniffs, and though Crowley smirks, his heart lifts in his ribcage at the protective huff in the angel’s voice. “It was only a matter of time before he raided your flat; you needed somewhere to stay. Your people won’t expect to find you here, the rebuild looks entirely different from the outside and I’ve leased the property under a new name. You’re safe here, directly under their noses.”

Crowley makes a dismissive noise low in his throat, biting the inside of his cheek. “I could have found somewhere else,” he says. It’s very true, and yet the words are hard-pressed to leave his mouth without scraping something inside him raw. “I still can-”

The hand not tucked against his waist takes his chin with gentle fingers, directing his gaze upward. Nerves twist and unravel in Crowley’s gut, a loose spool of red string. Aziraphale’s eyes hold him without reservation, or self-consciousness. Cornflower blue honesty, unhesitating, carving Crowley open better than any knife.

“I would have you nowhere else but here,” the angel says, voice quiet, calm, and so absolute Crowley’s stomach plummets into freefall. Aziraphale's eyes are warm, earnest in their fondness, and Crowley closes his eyes, swallowing hard against the swell of emotion that rises up inside him. He lifts a hand to take the fingers gripping his chin and hold them against the side of his face, ducking his head to hide his embarrassment. _Soft. Years of effort, and Aziraphale has finally made him soft._ Whatever poker face he used to be proud of is putty under the angel’s touch.

Which is why he’s then helpless but to falter completely when Aziraphale leans in, pressing his lips against Crowley’s downturned temple. He doesn’t say anything, but he hardly needs to. Crowley is foolishly, horrendously warm all the same, fingers threading with the angel's own, and he feels the edges of his mouth curl into a smile. Aziraphale, looking far too pleased with himself, leans back, and twists to his end side table where his latest reading— an early printing of collected Whitman poems— sits waiting.

Crowley watches him, a sigh spiraling from his lungs, when very suddenly, every instinct in his body howls in a warning so powerful he seizes up on the bedcovers. He shouts, vocal chords knotted, and his eyes slam shut as he bends over in agony. Holy water, it can only be holy water, because every cell in him is _burning-_

“Crowley!” he hears, but he can’t speak—he’s blinded by light, and a piercing sound, like the sonic boom of a jetplane—fills his every sense. His body is seemingly jolted from the bed beneath him as if catapulted, and the pain that had spread through his limbs like wildfire ceases just as quickly as it came as his back thuds against something broad and heavy. The scream that had been dragged from his mouth is cut off, and the light fades into photonegative flaring in the dark of his closed eyelids.

"Mary’s blessed _tears,_ ” he says, through gritted teeth. “That _hurt._ ” He groans loudly, annoyed by the lingering notes of pain still echoing beneath his skin, and crams his knuckles against his eyes. _Ow. Ow._ “What in Somebody’s name _was_ that?”

Groaning again, a bit for his own benefit at the rudeness of it all, Crowley lifts his hands from his eyes and blinks. And then blinks again.

Aziraphale is on top of him, a weight Crowley only suddenly just realizes, and on either side of Crowley’s torso, the angel’s corduroy-clad legs pin him tightly. While normally this would be a welcome and familiar image to Crowley’s eyes, the unrecognizable expression on Aziraphale’s face is anything but. It’s some terrible cross between horrified and pained, as though he’s witnessed something terrible, and the sight of it— directed precisely towards him in a unbreaking stare— sends a javelin of dread into Crowley’s very core.

“Erhm,” Crowley says. He blinks one more time.  “Aziraphale?”

He looks up further from Aziraphale’s position on top of him, and his mouth goes dry. Clutched in the angel’s hand is a blazing sword, poised at such an angle to bear down in a strike directly across his neck.

 _I think I’m missing something,_ Crowley thinks, somewhat stunned.

 _Something bad has happened. Something’s wrong._ The sword blazes into his retinas. _Clearly._

His rattled instincts shamble to the forefront of his mind: _remain calm, Crowley_ , they advise. _Focus. Use your words._

“Aziraphale,” he says again. He's quite proud to say his voice is only a hint strained. But the look on the angel’s face, if anything, becomes even more stricken, and Crowley must agree with himself.

Something is very, very wrong.

* * *

_A different London, 1990_

“Are we...certain about this?”

“Yes,” the angel and Anathema say together.

“Newt,” Anathema chides, without looking up from where she kneels on the aged bookshop floor. Her hand drags chalk in hasty, clean lines across the wood, creating fastidious, strange designs in the fresh white circle around her. “The candles, please.”

Newt presses his lips together before carrying on, placing stout wax candles every few inches along the circle’s circumference as he’d been told. He can hardly think to do otherwise. This is all happening too fast for him. First a motor accident, then Anathema, then the apocalypse, then the existence of angels, and now this? His mind is spinning on an out-of-control carousel, and he doesn’t understand how his day has all come to this, but here he stands regardless in a dusty London bookshop with a witch and an angel, and a ticking clock set on his heartbeat that’s a lot shorter than he ever dreamed or wanted to realize.

“But what if it _does_ work?” he asks fitfully. “How will he- she- _they_ manage to-”

Aziraphale’s head snaps up from its bent angle over the yellowed pages of _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch,_ moving for the first time in what seems like hours. His pale eyes go past Newt and look somewhere distant, flickering with an emotion that Newt cannot decipher.

“We need to hurry,” Anathema says then, and Newt finds on her face the same expression, an urgency, a grave, deep-welling awareness. Newt hears the bookstore windows rattle in their panes and swallows hard.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees, and waves a hand over the circle. The candles Newt had placed around its white edges flicker immediately to life, and the low, warm light fills the room with shadows that dance across towers of the angel’s books. The wind from the storm outside seems to howl louder, and the wooden beams holding the bookstore up seem to groan beneath an increasing weight.

Aziraphale cranes his neck, almost as if listening to some far-off sound.

“Anathema, my dear,” he says, calmly, or perhaps with the voice of someone trying to project calm. “You should perform the rites. I have a feeling we might soon have a visitor.”

Newt has no idea who the hell the angel could be talking about, but something in the angel’s eyes, and something rolling in the air, convinces him entirely that they are right, and that he should be worried about it. It feels somehow like a storm cloud is trying to form directly over their heads: nebulous static, electrical, invisible energy.

Anathema nods and stands, dusting the chalk from her skirt. She moves confidently to the prophecies, rolling up the sleeves of her jumper and dipping her dark head. She begins to mutter words that Newt does not understand, snatches of Latin and something even more foreign, tangled, and beside her the angel releases a great sigh. Newt stares as something like warmth- like coming home after a long, rainy day at work, like sleeping in...no, something greater, more like the embrace of a mother— fills his chest. He closes his eyes in its intensity, slipping briefly into a serenity and comfort that buffets his every sense.

He opens his eyes and thinks, _the angel is glowing,_ because he is, just a bit. Hazy gold brimming at the edges of his round, tweedy frame, barely visible in the candlelight. The feeling around him— _love,_ he thinks, maybe, _selfless love—_ fades a bit as the walls suddenly shake.

Anathema’s cool voice raises louder, and she lifts a hand over the circle. Impossible light, like a distant star, winks into existence in the center of it, a still lightning bug gaining magnitude as Newt watches, transfixed.

Aziraphale makes a smooth, singular step towards the front door. There’s a pen in his hand that Newt did not notice before, thin and metal and black.

“I shall hold them off until it’s finished,” he says. “Keep your voice strong and clear, dear girl.” He turns his chin, meeting Newt’s wide-eyed gaze. Newt looks back at him as though for the first time, through the vessel of frumpy clothes and curly hair, at what shines unnaturally beneath. Newt sees an angel standing before him, an unmovable pillar, a being beyond Earth and mortal soil. Here is a being of immense power and understanding, and looking directly at him, at that. Newt feels at once awed, afraid, and very, very small.

“I would recommend you stand back a bit,” says Aziraphale the angel, agent of the Heavenly Host. Newt nods, speechless, and Aziraphale’s impossible, weighty eyes move away.

The front door slams open, and darkness slithers through.

“ _You,_ ” Aziraphale says. His voice is not loud, nor it is angry, but there is something disturbed beneath the angel’s calm, and Newt’s heart clenches with fear.

“Angel,” the Darkness says. Closer, it resembles a man, with tall, keen limbs and honey skin. His voice practically _curls_ around the word, a confident, low coil. He wears a sleek, expensive charcoal suit and shiny shoes that click loudly on the bookshop floor, and moves towards them like something seamless through water, without visible or trustworthy effort.

Beneath a set of sleek black glasses that flicker in the yellow candlelight, the dark man smiles a very sharp, very white grin.

“They sent _you?_ ” Aziraphale says. Of all the things Newt expected the angel to be, annoyed was not on the list.

“Rude,” the man says, grin unfaltering. “But I felt the same way, when I heard it was _you_ mixed up in all this, angel. Of all the seraphim stationed on Earth, it had to be the stuffy, boring librarian meddling with the Great Ineffable Plan.”

Though one couldn’t tell through the man’s dark glasses where he was looking, Newt feels the man’s gaze slide across the room like a physical, lingering thing. Anathema’s voice is strong, unhalting in the momentary silence, and behind them the ball of light in the circle is growing into a blinding, writhing burst of pure white.

“Angel,” the man says. His sharp smile fades. “We need to talk.”

“I’m afraid there’s little to say." The angel's tone is plain, short. Newt blinks and the pen in Aziraphale’s hand is suddenly a flaming sword the length of the angel’s forearm, blade tilted towards the man in the suit.

“I’m not here to fight,” the man says quickly, taking back a step. “I mean it, angel. Hell- the Adversary- this whole apocalypse business, it’s- look, I know we’ve had our- our differences but _honestly-_ ”

“Demons are incapable of honesty,” Aziraphale sniffs, and Newt feels the blood leave his body. “I’m afraid I have no time left to indulge your lies, my dear. Or your attempt to stop me.”

“Wait a moment,” the demon says, with greater urgency, “ _Wait,_ angel, for Go- Sa- for your _own bloody sake,_ I meant it when I said I wasn’t here to fight. I don’t want to _stop_ you, angel, I want to-”

“— _Stall,_ ” Aziraphale interrupts, voice clipped. “Something you’re very, very good at, if I recall correctly.”

Impossibly, something like shame flickers across the demon’s face, and Aziraphale sighs, as if that were all the answer he needed.

“I’m sorry, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. Something like regret fills his voice, tired, resigned. “But I cannot stand by and watch this world crumble, no matter what my- your people say. I cannot watch humanity suffer and waste away. In fact, I will do anything to prevent it.” He twists his sword of fire, bowing his head. “So this is simply the way it has to be. No hard feelings, hmm?”

 _“Aziraphale.”_ Crowley’s hands are halfway up and rising. “Just listen— _"_

Faster than Newt can see, Aziraphale lunges.

Newt’s ears ring when the flaming sword slices through the air, but impossibly, the demon dodges the blow, and then they’re dancing, flurries of fire and limbs, moving too quickly for Newt to comprehend. He hears the demon shouting Aziraphale’s name, hears Anathema’s voice lifting and lifting, hears the thunder rumbling outside and the foundation of the house shake, and the ball of light in the corner starts to hum with the roar of a descending jet engine. Newt can only watch dumbstruck as the angel and demon clash before him in the slowly growing light of the circle behind him. It’s not long before the angel has the upper hand, flaming sword moving like a line of pure fire in the air, sending the demon to the floor. The angel quickly bears down upon him, pinning him with his legs, burning weapon raised in a killing blow.

“Angel, stop!” the demon gasps, throwing up a claw-nailed, outstretched hand. Somehow, clearly despite himself, the angel hesitates, the glow around him blazing now with visible power and holy strength.

The demon had lost his glasses in the scuffle. Looking up at Aziraphale, Newt can see his eyes are a panicked, startling yellow-gold, with cat-like black slits for pupils.

“For once in your bloody life, listen to me!” the demon begs. “I want to _help_ you!”

Aziraphale stares at him, blue eyes stuck wide. “Pardon me?”

The demon Crowley opens his mouth to speak, but as he does the pulsing sound of the circle kicks off, overtaking Newt’s ears so utterly he has to clamp his hands over his head to block out the piercing sound of it. The light glows impossibly brighter and Newt must squint in the light to watch the ball of light shake and shudder, growing and vibrating like metal between powerful magnets.

Anathema’s voice is a hoarse cry, shouting the rites with finality and desperation, and suddenly the light rears up like a living creature. With a roar, it escapes the bounds of the circle like a shot bullet, careening towards the angel and demon.

It strikes them head on, and Newt is blinded.

When the light fades, he rushes to Anathema’s side. She is still standing, but barely, sweating and half collapsed on the podium. She allows him to take her in his arms, to tug her steady.

“Did it work?” she asks him, her voice degraded like burnt paper. Newt blinks away the sting from his eyes and turns to look at the angel and demon lying on the floor.

The angel is staring in disbelief, sword limp in hand, frozen in place with either leg on the side of the demon below him. The demon who is...smoking.

Smoking...and wearing an entirely different suit. Newt gawks. Still slick, still black, but with a pressed shirt of white, rather than red. For a hysterical moment, Newt thinks the spell worked exactly as planned, and the result is a costume change. 

“Mary’s blessed _tears,_ " the demon hisses then from the ground, hands over his eyes. “That _hurt._ What was that?”

His hands leave his face, and yellow eyes stare wide up at the angel bearing over him.

“Erhm,” the demon Crowley says. “Aziraphale?”

* * *


	2. beware the storm that gathers here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH my god the response to this fic was fucking amazing, thank you so much!!!!!

**chapter two**

 

The demon’s hands leave his face, and he blinks up at Aziraphale with a shock that leaves him reeling.

 _It cannot be,_ Aziraphale thinks. Uncomprehending, he stares at the changed suit, at Crowley’s face, at the surprise and confusion in those yellow eyes. At the thin lips he’s seen smile and sneer millions of times that move to say words he can’t hear through the static in his ears. He recognizes the shape of them, knows how they stretch around his name even if he hasn’t heard in years: _Aziraphale,_ he’s saying, and the angel’s chest burns, and he smells human blood and the lingering of smoke.

_It cannot be him._

“Aziraphale,” the Crowley beneath him says again. His voice is mildly bewildered, but altogether unruffled considering the situation at hand. Golden eyes flicker to the sword in Aziraphale's hand, and go a bit wider. Aziraphale’s grip on the hilt goes slack at the sight of them, despite his bitterest effort.

“Angel?” Crowley says. His gaze flickering to where Aziraphale straddles his hips, and he blinks. “Is there...a reason we’re on the floor?” His tone is closer to that of a man commenting on strange weather from his front porch than that of a demon inches from fiery discorporation. The demon’s lack of bodily concern, among other things, makes Aziraphale’s head spin.

 _Angel._ Crowley’s voice had curled the word into an easy moniker, rather than condescending category. The heart in Aziraphale's human ribcage shudders beneath sudden memories, and it is a physical rattling below his skin worsened by the presence of the demon below him, the unassuming weight of those eyes upon him. Unable to bear a moment of it longer, Aziraphale quickly stands, stepping backwards to a safe distance. Thoughtlessly, he wills the flaming sword in his hand into a pen again, then wills it away entirely.

“Impossible,” he mutters, in denial of the truth. Because if it _is_ true, if _Crowley_ is-

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, twisting up from the floor. His face, his shoulders, his voice, it’s all _wrong_ and Aziraphale cannot stop staring, much as he wants to look away, to blink and have it not be so. “How did we get here? What’s going on?”

His eyes flit once towards Newt and Anathema and the confusion on his once-cool and confident face only grows. The sight of it only imbalances Aziraphale more. “Uh. Hello. Long time, then.” He looks sidelong at Aziraphale with sharpening desperation, hissing, “ _Angel_. What _._ Is _. Happening._ ”

“How can it be _you?_ ” Aziraphale whispers, shaking his head. “How can _you_ be the Same-But-Changed?” It feels like punishment. He turns against Heaven, against the Ineffable Plan, and in return...maybe it _is_ punishment.

Crowley looks at Aziraphale as if he’s gone mad, his dark eyebrows creasing with frustration. “What are you— _seriously,_ how did we get here? We were just in the flat, I—what am I _missing_ here,Aziraphale? What’s going on? What’s the Same-But-Changed?”

Dazed, Aziraphale turns away, his throat sealed closed with a tide of unreasonable emotion. He must gather himself, he thinks, there is so much at stake and _no_ time to dither _,_ but his heart is deaf to this reasoning, and rather mortified, he feels his eyes sting. He’s weak with gratitude when Anathema—brave girl, Aziraphale thinks with earnest intensity, _blessed_ girl—clears her throat. Witchcraft is such a draining, delicate art, he knows, and the girl is pale from her successful efforts.

 _Successful._ Aziraphale’s heart gives a horrible, mighty twist in his chest and his eyes drop to the bookshop floorboards.

“Hello,” Anathema says, her polite voice hoarse from the ritual spell.

“Erhm. Hello, Anathema,” Crowley says awkwardly. Aziraphale’s head jerks back up, blinking. He knows the girl's name. He _knows_ it. “I don’t suppose _you_ could tell me what’s going on then?” He shoots Aziraphale an exasperated look that the angel doesn’t know how to begin feeling about.

“We just performed a spell,” the boy, Newt, volunteers nervously at her side. “A real one.”

“A spell,” Crowley echoes. “ _Witchcraft_ is why we’re here?” He blinks. “Well. That’s...impressive. But that _hurt,_ I’ll have you know. Haven’t felt real magic since St. Petersburg, and even then, old Grigori was low on juice. It was all those holes, probably, those nobles really went for him—more effort than they should have gone to, his contract was up soon anyways.” Crowley shakes his head, visibly returning to task, and his gilded eyes narrow to slits. “Wait a moment, did you _accidentally_ teleport me downstairs messing about with some old spellbook? I’m not a bloody crash dummy!”

None of what he says makes a spot of sense, and Aziraphale meets Anathema’s eyes, baffled.

“So you...don’t know why you’re here,” the young witch says, and her expression crumples. For the first time since Aziraphale met her the day before, she looks hopeless. The unheard sentiment in her voice makes his own heart sink; if this Crowley doesn’t know why he’s here, there’s little chance he can help them after all. Another one of Agnes’s prophecies, unhelpful until too late.

The Antichrist is ending the world in three hours. They have no Plan B.

“There’s loads of things about this I don’t understand, if you want me to be specific,” Crowley deadpans. “How you lot got here, _why_ you decided to perform a transportation spell, and why _you_ had your bloody flaming sword of righteousness out would suffice for now. I get knocked out by a bit of spellwork and what, you think a flaming poke is the _perfect_ thing to wake me up?” His last question is asked directly to Aziraphale, offense clear in his tone, and something in the wording of Crowley’s questions sets off claxon bells inside his mind, ringing tangibly through the fragile bones of his vessel.

“Crowley,” he says, and internally congratulates himself on how smoothly the name emerges from his mouth. The demon’s attention is unwavering, meeting his eyes without a shred of memory or hesitation, without a hint of the darkness that used to linger there in the hundreds of years before this one, and it is nearly enough to steal the words directly from Aziraphale’s tongue.

“The spell was from a book,” he says, managing not to croak. “A prophecy book. Agnes Nutter, witch.”

“I know bloody well who she is, and the book you’re talking about,” Crowley says, frowning. “Never wanted to hear her name again, to be honest.” Crowley’s frown cuts deeper, thin lips tugging down, and Aziraphale can’t help the bit of hope that springs up in him at the demon’s familiarity with the text. “I didn’t realize she wrote spells as well as prophecies. Her chants as muddled as her soothsaying?”

The demon suddenly goes stiff, spine straightening as though he’d been cracked with a whip. “What in Heaven’s name were you doing reading a spell from that madwoman’s book?!” he demands. His attention darts from Anathema back to Aziraphale, again, eyes angry and shoulders tense with anxiety. Aziraphale swallows hard under Crowley’s expectant gaze, and at the lack of immediate response, the demon’s eyebrows crash together in frustration.

“ _Aziraphale,”_ Crowley says, voice twisted with an emotion that makes something inside Aziraphale snarl and coil tightly. It’s almost as if he is pleading with Aziraphale to explain, but he knows all too well that demons do not beg. Not _this_ demon.

‘ _For once in your bloody life, listen to me! I want to help you!’_

The echo of Crowley’s frantic voice rings in his ears as Anathema again speaks up. “This particular spell,” she says, “was part of a particular prophecy. The Same-But-Changed was to be summoned on this date, during the storm of the century, hours after Atlantis rose from the sea—”

“What, again?”

“—and the day before the end of the world,” Anathema finishes, with appropriate gravity, and Crowley’s entire expression drops like a stone.

“The end of the world,” he says hollowly. He laughs once, a humorless punch of air. “You can’t be serious.” He looks to Aziraphale, and inconceivably, the look on his face can only be described as betrayed. Aziraphale blinks and rage is suddenly boiling over in the demon’s eyes, burning like hellfire, the first familiar sight that Aziraphale has seen from him.

“Why didn't you tell me? You’ve had that book for _months_ now, how you could you keep this from me?!” Aziraphale’s jaw goes slack as Crowley points a savage finger at him, voice scalding and worst of all, _hurt_. “You _knew_ there was going to be another apocalypse and didn’t say _anything?_ ”

Aziraphale drowns beneath emitted emotion and bewilderment. “I- I don’t know what—” His voice snaps in two once he fully processes every word Crowley said. His heart falls and suspends, paralyzed in free space.

“What do you mean, ‘another’?” he breathes.

Slow realization passes over Crowley’s face like a tidal wave, and the demon's eyes stretch wider than gold coins.

“Something is... _very_ wrong here,” the demon says, voicing Aziraphale’s misgivings with a fear in his voice that the angel never thought he would hear.

 _Yes,_  Aziraphale thinks, woeful. _Yes, there is._

“Angel,” Crowley says. His voice has a shake to it, nerves threading through it like cracks in old asphalt. “Aziraphale...tell me the date. Please.”

The last word, the fragility in it, hits him like a blow, and he’s speaking before he realizes it. “August 7th. 1990.”

Crowley goes as pale as a sheet, for the first time speechless.

Aziraphale swallows the stone from his throat, and states what can only be obvious. “You’re not...this time’s Crowley. This world’s.” The reality of it should be a relief. It isn’t. It rolls in Aziraphale’s stomach like grief.

“I'm not,” Crowley rasps. “If it’s happening, again—for the first time, for you...” There’s a moment where Crowley’s eyes crash closed, his brow crumpling beneath a weight that Aziraphale can feel burdened unbearably upon his own grace. The despair and fear, the responsibility. The consequences, should they fail. The truth, knowing there is so much to lose, and so little time to change the inevitable.

“Alright. Okay. Buggering fuck. Alright.” The demon paces in an aborted circle, hands moving up to fist in his hair, grasp it by the roots, and release. “ _Right._ ” He spins on a heel and meets Aziraphale’s gaze. “How much time have we got?”

“Two hours, forty-nine minutes,” Anathema reports, and to Aziraphale’s amazement, the demon exhales in relief.

“Ah, that’s good. Plenty of time.” Aziraphale blinks in shock.

“It...is?” Newt ventures.

Crowley waves a hand. “Yes, yes, enough to get to Lower Tadfield in a jiff with a proper miracle or two. Or the Bentley, either or.”

“You—you _know_ where the Antichrist is?” Aziraphale says, voice filled with hope. _Bless and keep Agnes Nutter,_ Aziraphale thinks, head bowing in gratitude _._ If they could find him, there was a chance they could stop everything. Save the entire world. It was a greater miracle that Aziraphale could have ever wished for.

“Name, age, address, hair color, whatever,” Crowley says dismissively. “But you don’t need to worry about it, honestly, the lad’s got his head on straight. Needs to have a talk with his little group of backyard friends for at least another hour before we’ll be any good.”

“Um,” Newt says sensibly, when Aziraphale and Anathema don’t have the words.

“But that’s not what important right now,” Crowley continues. His voice hardens, the gilt of his eyes going cold.

“Not _important?"_  Aziraphale repeats, incredulous.

“Same-But-Changed,” Crowley snaps. “Fill me in, Angel. This prophecy, it has to be different than mine, because I’m _here—”_ The demon gestures flippily to himself, as though he could be referring to anyone else, “—and I think I would have bloody well remembered if another me got ripped through time and dumped into the bookshop. You certainly would have had a _fit.”_

It’s very possible that such a thing could still happen, and quite soon. “The Apocalypse is mere _minutes_ away, Crowley,” Aziraphale says pointedly. At this point, he's approaching something close to _cross_ , a rare feeling he blames on the urgency of the situation (and not at all due to other ignored emotions). “Surely we can explain things in transit?”

“Not until I know this prophecy! Not until I know what you’ve _done,_ bringing me here! Angel, you know as well as I do the dangers in meddling with the cosmic multiverse, and _worse,_ you’re six bloody months off!” Crowley lets out a growl, whipping his head side to side. “If your sssside finds out you’ve messed with time asss _well_ as forbidden physssicss, you could get the Holy Firesss!” The louder the demon’s voice becomes, the more it slides about on his tongue, slipping into a hissing lisp that Aziraphale has not heard in millennia.

“We didn’t know what the spell would do!” Aziraphale protests, at the same time as Anathema insists, “It was _my_ spell!”

“It doessn’t damn well matter now, doessss it?” Crowley cries, pitch firing through an octave. “It’sss done! And you’ll have to do it _again_ to ssset it right!” All at once, Crowley deflates upon himself, slumping. He lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply through his teeth.

“Angel,” he says, and Aziraphale’s throat grows a pebble. The demon looks up. “What does the prophecy mean?”

Aziraphale breathes in and out, measured to calm himself. The tension beneath his skin from the moment Crowley— _either_ of them—had been near insufferable, and the demon’s tantrum had, impossibly, helped relieve it somewhat. “We believed it had meant...a warrior, of some kind. Or some sort of double—er, _same_ , but changed— that could equal the Antichrist and defeat him.”

_“In the finall hours of the laste day, when trydent folke rise above the sea, looke thee to myne writing here. Descendant of myne, wyth witchfinder and winged principalitie at guarde, must calle unto thy magic and reed these rytes. The one who knoweth what muste be won, twinnd from darkness borne, The Same-Butte-Changed will restorr what is loste, and balance the Darke and the Lyght.”_

Anathema finishes her recitation, leaving Crowley looking vaguely nauseated. “I’m not bloody Heracles,” he says. “But it’s pretty clear for the old bat, I suppose—I take you lot to the Antichrist, we all have a chat, Apocalypse averted. Darkness and light balanced.” Crowley’s brow wrinkles. “But I don’t understand why you need _me._ What about the other—erhm, me? You all should have been able to find Adam just as we did, but I suppose that’s where the “changed” bit comes in.” The demon’s face twists, as though experiencing an unpleasant thought. “Where is he, by the way? The other me?”

“He poofed,” Newt blurts out.

A slow blink. “...Poofed.”

“The spell?” Newt tried to explain, wincing. “He and Mr. Aziraphale were going at it and Anathema said the magic words and there was a massive noise and—poof? Then it was...you? Other you? Uh, _you_ you standing where he was. Well. Lying down?”

“We _switched places?"_  Crowley says, voice coming out at a near squawk. The demon lets out a sudden whistle, and a white, sharp grin splits his face. “My Aziraphale is going to have a cow.”

 _My Aziraphale._ The words mean nothing, but they take hold of Aziraphale’s heart and apply pressure. He closes his eyes to the image of Crowley’s smile—genuine, amused, tan cheeks dimpling—and feels something in his chest thud hard and painfully, like a brass knocker against his diaphragm.

“Right then,” this Crowley says, clapping his hands together. “Adam should’ve had his little talk with his troupe, seen the light and all that—we just need to show up, give the lad a little bit of solidarity when he talks to his dear old Dad, and Apocalypse averted. Then you send me home.”

The remaining members of the bookshop all exchange uncertain glances, before reaching consensus in anxious, resigned nods.

“It’s not so bad as all that,” Crowley says to them, with a lightness that brightens the most frightened corners in Aziraphale’s chest. “It’s rather like ripping a band-aid off, the whole thing is easy, really, once you’re through it.” A beat and the demon’s mouth screws. “Well. I say easy, there’s a bit of a climax that’s a hair awful—the Prince of Darkness is a damper on pretty much any event—but erhm, we all leave without a scratch, physically speaking.” He clears his throat, and says, “Just so we’re clear, we are _not_ going to kill the Antichrist.”

Everyone in the room opens their mouth, but he quickly cuts them off. “He just had a little spot of pre-adolescent growth,” the demon says, defensive. “It’s not his fault Heaven and Hell want to battle royale with him at the helm, is it? No Apocalypses will be happening today, we are just going to be there for _moral support."_  Crowley’s gaze flickers once to the boy Newt, and adds, “Erhm, and a bit of sabotage.”

Aziraphale can’t comprehend how he and Crowley will be able to stop the Apocalypse with mere comforting words, but they’re out of options and Aziraphale feels like any more shocking revelations will rattle him out of his wits. The information that they will not have to kill a child spawned of infinite darkness and evil, however, gives enough relief that he feels watery in the knees.

“We...don’t have to kill him?” Aziraphale asks, feebly.

“As if either of us would have been able to do it,” Crowley replies, a smile curling at the side of his mouth. Aziraphale can’t help but frown. He isn’t sure that's true. He had been preparing himself to do it for years now, in case of contingency, and Crowley—why would he assume anything about what _he_ was or wasn’t capable of doing?

“Right,” he says, pressing his lips together. The edge of mirth fades from Crowley’s expression.

“Angel,” he says, with a thread of question in the name. Frowning, he takes a step forward. Aziraphale can’t fight the instinct that takes hold of him, and takes an immediate step back.

Crowley goes still.

“Aziraphale,” he says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. A beat, and very suddenly, the troubled look on the demon's face disappears, shuttered away.

"Angel," he says. His voice now is low, cautious. “...Why did you have your sword out?”

The question should not send ice through his stomach the way that it does, and yet, Aziraphale feels cold. He opens his mouth to answer, and though the answer is simple, he finds he cannot. _I was going to discorporate you._  “I—”

“Going at it.” Crowley says then, voice vacant. He's staring at Aziraphale, but looking somewhere past him. “Said we were going at it. You had your sword out.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says. He feels suddenly compelled to offer comfort, but doesn’t know why, and doesn’t have the words with which to do so.  

“Why,” Crowley starts, but something in his throat catches, and the sentence dies. The demon’s throat moves visibly in a swallow. He looks at Aziraphale, and there is a desperation within his yellow eyes that _aches._

“The arrangement,” the demon says, in a voice that is thin, easily fractured.

In response, Aziraphale’s confusion is gentle. “Arrangement?”

Crowley’s eyes fall closed regardless, head canting.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says, feeling raw under the strange grief he feels swamping his senses, and the Crowley before him shakes his head.

“S’quite alright, angel,” he says roughly. “Not my world. Won’t be here for much longer, anyway, and it’s not like—” The demon’s voice breaks, cleaved in two, and when he looks up, his face is horrorstruck.

“We swapped,” he chokes. “I’m here, and _he’s—_ ” The demon takes a panicked step forward. “Angel. My—is he—is he a danger?”

Aziraphale doesn't understand, feels his eyebrows wrinkle. “Is he—”

“ _Your Crowley,"_  the demon hisses, frantic. “Is he a danger to my Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale's eyes go wide. “I don’t—I—” He struggles, mind whirling, the look on the demon’s face and the sound of his voice derailing every attempt, and says the only thing he can think of. “Aren’t you?”

Crowley looks gutted. He shakes his head.

“Send me back,” he rasps.

“What?” Aziraphale breathes.

“ _Send me back,”_ Crowley yells, and Aziraphale flinches at the sudden volume. “Send me back, you have to send me back—”

“But the Antichrist,” Anathema protests.

“Damn your Antichrist!” Crowley is a fire, eyes blazing, teeth bared. There is a wildness to him that Aziraphale can barely recognize, rage and terror burning so deeply within him that Aziraphale can feel it in the air and on his skin, digging into his own mind and making his human heart race. “You can bloody well handle it yourselves—”

“Two hours,” Aziraphale says, finally locating his voice under the dizzying miasma that is Crowley’s fear. His voice is fragile, but cuts across the demon’s ranting, drawing him short. “Give us—help us stop this Apocalypse, and we will send you home.”

“Two hours for your Crowley,” Crowley bites out, “two entire hours for him to—” The demon’s voice shatters and rebuilds. “Damn it, angel, do you know what will happen if he’s discorporated? Do you have _any idea?_ ” Crowley’s hands go to his hair, digging nails mercilessly into his own scalp. “Our sides _cast us out._ Playing humanity’s side in this, turning against the ‘Plan’—we’re traitors to them! My side wants to throw me into a holy water Jacuzzi and if you were sent to Heaven—”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says weakly. He’d feared—he knew trying to stop the Apocalypse would get him in quite a bit of trouble, that he might not even survive the attempt, but he’d not anticipated...

What presses more in his mind, against his better judgement, is the question of why Crowley would even care.

“Just send me back,” Crowley pleads. There is no doubt to it now, the demon is begging. “You don’t need me. Adam, he’s in Lower Tadfield, you’ll find him at the American airbase there, just do the spell again and switch us back and—”

“Not until it’s over,” Anathema says, with a voice like iron. “The Prophecy wouldn’t be there if you weren’t important, and you’re not going anywhere until we know the world isn’t ending in two hours and thirty-two minutes!” When Crowley opens his mouth, nostrils flared, she lifts a quick hand. “ _I’m_ the only one who can send you back, and I say you’re coming with us.”

Crowley looks immediately both homicidal and shot through with arrows, the muscles in his neck drawn tight. “Anathema,” he growls. “You don’t underst—”

Anathema doesn’t flinch, and answers him through her teeth. “Just because it’s over for you doesn’t mean it’s over for us! For our world! I’ve been training my entire life for this, to summon the Same-But-Changed and defeat the Antichrist, and you’re not going anywhere until we’ve made _certain_ there’s going to be a tomorrow!”

Crowley stares at her, lips pressed together in a bloodless line. A beat, and he exhales like a steam train through his nose. “ _Fine,"_  he snaps. He raises a finger, pointing, “But the minute it’s all over, witch, you send me back!”

“Deal,” Anathema says, and Aziraphale straightens in place. One does not say that word lightly in conversation with a demon, and yet, the woman’s spine is a steel beam. _Descendant of mine, indeed._

“Deal,” Crowley says, voice like shards of black ice. His hand dives into his jacket pocket and whips out a pair of glossy Ray-Bans, identical to the ones lying on the floor inches from his feet. Sliding them over his eyes, he turns to Aziraphale.

“Think you can fireproof two mortals?” he asks.

 

* * *

 

_A few minutes ago, six months in the future_

 

“ _Crowley!”_

The cry tears from his throat as Crowley contorts on the bed, screaming in agony, and there’s a flash and thundering boom that leaves him senseless. Aziraphale closes his eyes and when the ringing stops, dives forward.

“Crowley!” he yelps, placing his hands on the demon’s gasping face. He’s _smoking,_ Aziraphale realizes, disbelieving, and Crowley’s yellow eyes are blinking rapidly, their focus flying wildly about the room before locking with the angel’s concerned gaze.

“A-” Crowley swallows hard, and as Aziraphale thumbs his cheekbone in worry, he lifts a shaking hand to the one cupping his face, fingers skimming the edges of Aziraphale’s knuckles. His eyes are round with disbelief. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Angel?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, relieved to see him unharmed. “My goodness. Are you alright, my dear?”

“...My dear?” Crowley echoes faintly, his tan face pale, and before Aziraphale can respond, he scans the demon’s body for injury and frowns.

“Crowley,” he says, voice puzzled. “What happened to your shirt?”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to those of you who are like 'hey, my baby Aziraphale isn't being very in-character here', I say: yeah, you're right about that, can't imagine why ;) 
> 
> (and yes i know the prophecy is cheesy garbage but i hate writing in comedic old english as i'm very bad at it, i will revise it later!!!)
> 
> and yes, all of the chapters will be this dramatic, and i refuse to apologize. i love some good GO drama.


	3. summoned by your own hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone!!! thanks so much for waiting for me to come back from travels!! all of your responses and comments have been amazing, tysm <3

**chapter three**

 

“Crowley?”

Crowley cannot speak. There are hands on his face. The angel’s hands.

A thumb slides again over his cheekbone. The touch is gentle. As are the eyes hovering above him, round with uncertainty, glimmering with the unmistakable light of divinity—and blue, he thinks. 

The angel’s eyes are blue, and softened by a kindness he has not seen meant for him in hundreds of years.

_My dear._

“Angel,” he rasps, blinking. He half expects the sight, the hands on his face, to disappear when he does, but the angel above him remains. Behind his eyelids, a sword of fire burns. “What—”

“You were screaming,” the angel above him says quickly. His voice is low, fretful. Worried. “And- and  _smoking._ And your _clothes_ , my dear, they’ve changed.” The thumb on Crowley’s cheek swipes upward once again, anxious. “Crowley, what happened?”

“My—” Crowley’s thoughts are ripped gossamer, slipping through his fingers. His muscles ache like his body’s been tenderized. He was certain he’d been moments from discorporation but then—and _now—_  

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says again. He’s frowning. Concern suffuses the angel’s very being, a corona of such goodwill and _feeling_ that the demon can scarcely bear to look _._ “What is it? What’s wrong?”

 _Everything,_ Crowley wants to say. He can’t think through the heat of the angel’s touch on his skin— _why is he looking at me like that, what is—_ how did he—

Crowley sits up. The angel's hands drop away and Crowley's at once both grateful and left cold. A mad, immediate urge to drag them back strikes him, and he buries it mercilessly, but the ghost of them on his face lingers in the question of why they were there in the first place.

Scrambling for order, Crowley takes account of his surroundings. He realizes, quite at once, that he is sitting in a bed. His legs are spread out below him on a soft downy comforter, and the angel is kneeling beside him, leaning a hair back from his close perch at Crowley’s side.

Pajamas.

The angel is wearing pajamas.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, for the third time. His voice is slightly more insistent now, a strained sort of impatience twisting like vines through the anxiety in his voice. He’s frowning mightily, and blue, blue eyes are locked on his. It sets off every instinct in Crowley’s body, making his heart thunder like drum beats in his chest. The last time he’d met Aziraphale’s eyes, for the first time in what seemed like millennia, was moments before he was nearly run through with a sword of righteous fire.

Crowley swallows hard. The self-preserving instincts he’s honed for years are failing him. Or rather, he’s failing _them. Get up,_ they're saying, (quite insistently at this point), _get the_ Hell _gone and fly to bloody Mars, you’re out of time and the Angel wants you_ dead—

He should be—he needs to—  

“Crowley.” 

He does not run.

“Angel,” he says. He licks dry lips, throat feeling raw. “...Where are we?”

Bewilderment crosses the angel’s face like a passing comet, and crash lands with alarm in its wake. “We’re above the bookshop, my dear,” he says, the keen, divine influence wrapped round him pulsing and making Crowley wince. “The apartment?”

Above the bookshop. That makes some sense, Crowley thinks, but not enough. “But why’d you bring me up here? That light...” He trails off, remembering the flash and the inferno that had followed, devouring up his senses and throwing him down a short, dark tunnel.

Aziraphale’s brow is a mountain range, folded over in thought. “Why did I...do you not remember getting home this evening? Gracious.” The angel reaches for him then, lifting soft hands, and Crowley’s muscles petrify.

It must show on his face, because the angel stops with hands outstretched, and the concern he felt radiate from the angel before pales in comparison to now. “Your vessel’s mind, my dear, if this was magic—it’s an unpleasant business on the human body. I just want to make sure you’re alright,” Aziraphale says, visibly upset. 

Crowley stares at him in silence, gut clenched, memories flooding his senses with dread— embers, gentle fingers, the rusty smell of blood— 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Aziraphale asks then, dropping his hands reluctantly and dragging Crowley to the present before he could slip beneath the current. “Before that light and noise?”

Crowley coughs a horrid little laugh that scrapes up his throat. “You mean the part where you tried to shish-kebob me?”

The angel blinks. “...I beg your pardon?”

The lack of understanding in Aziraphale’s eyes throws him, but the memory has stirred up anger beneath his skin, ocean tides of frustration and failure and regret. “Flaming sword?” he snaps. “The fight? _No hard feelings?_ ” Crowley feels his lip curling up over his canines, his nostrils flaring, but just as quickly as it was lit, his ire is swiftly put out by the expression that crosses Aziraphale’s face.

Befuddlement. Not shame, or righteousness, nor the awful mask of resignation he’d worn when Crowley had come into the bookshop. Total confusion.

“I don’t understand. Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “My sword, we both carefully misplaced it, remember? And the last thing we argued about was fine art, or some modern attempt of it. And it was more of a bickering than an arguing, and even that is a hard way of putting it.”

Crowley’s mind halts and grinds on _fine art,_ spitting up smoke. “I’d hardly call you trying to dissscorporate me an _argument.”_ His voice cracks twice and his damned tongue slides around on fried nerves. “Try _ex-ssecution!”_

“ _Discorporate_ you?” Aziraphale says, reeling backwards. His voice is appalled. “Good Heavens. Why would— _me?_ I’ve never discorporated anyone! Not _directly,_ certainly, and most definitely not on purpose, and— _gracious._ Never _you._ What would make you think such a thing?” 

Crowley gapes. He doesn’t remember—then why is he— _never him—_     

In a swift motion Crowley swings his feet off the bed and stands, backing away from the Aziraphale that stares back at him with those ridiculous, _bloody_ blue concerned eyes and—

The impossible certainty that had been circling his spine from the moment he opened his eyes passes ‘go’ into executive processing, and the realization that follows stops the world from turning.

_This is all wrong._

He rips his eyes from the angel on the bed to the small end table beside it, where beside an antique lamp, an empty cup of tea, and an alarm clock sits is a miniscule, month-by-month calendar. In the corner of its print is a small ouroboros and a logo that says ‘SerpCorp Banking Ltd.’, and it is a name he recognizes, considering how it hails from a bank that he helped the owner start up to the tune of half a soul and a permanent parking spot in his name downtown. 

Surrounded by a sea of blank ink, on a tear-off piece of paper, the day’s date is lettered in brilliant red.

“That’s—” Crowley croaks. He blinks, shakes his head once. “That can’t—” He looks back at the angel, whose delphinium eyes have never left his, and feels his stomach drop away.

“That date—is it—”

Understanding dawns on the angel’s face, underpinned with piercing worry. “Yes,” Aziraphale says. “The date is correct, my dear...but is it for you?”

Crowley’s vocal chords are a useless snarl. He shakes his head.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says. A beat, and the angel asks tentatively, “Too early?”

Crowley shakes his head once more. 

“Not yet,” the angel breathes. “ _Goodness._ ” Dumbstruck, the demon watches the angel frown. “But if you are from the past...Crowley, you said the last thing you remember is...me? Trying to—” He cuts off, lines carving between his brows, his frown becoming even more pronounced. “That can’t be correct. We’ve never tussled, not once. Not even a faux fisticuff, even in the old days. If you’re not from our future, or our _past,_ then...you must be from—”

“Somewhere different,” Crowley rasps. The reality is shocking, but what has rattled his bones to their marrow, what sings in his ears like the Blitz is Aziraphale’s means of conclusion. 

 _Never you. We’ve never tusseled._ The apartment, the bed, _my dear—_

_Did the world end with that flash? Was that pain the Antichrist, clenching his fist? Is this what comes to our kind in the end?_

Is this what he deserves? Are the fallen redeemed in death? Is this forgiveness?

The angel in front of him moves from the bed and stands. The strange, folded look on his face, the cautious way he moves as if to steady skittish prey, makes Crowley’s heart knock around his chest like a loose pendulum.

 _Forgiveness, or damnation?_ Fear curdles in Crowley’s stomach, brief madness taking hold of his limbs in a rictus, and he takes a shaky step back. The angel lifts his hands, a gesture of harmlessness, surrender, and Crowley’s entire being _aches._

This isn’t his Aziraphale.

And there are potted plants in the windowsill, _living_ ones, a pair of Raybans thrown on the desk to his right, and crates of vinyl records beneath a turntable shoved beside an armchair in the room’s back corner. Evidence of closeness, of living and lingering _,_ entangled amongst all the material and human tokens he knows to be his Aziraphale but—

This isn’t his Aziraphale. 

He’s another Crowley’s. A Crowley who lives with this Aziraphale, _sleeps_ with this Aziraphale, who’s _my dear_ to this Aziraphale—

“Crowley,” this angel— not his, not close, but with eyes that _care—_ says, and Crowley cannot bear it.

“I can’t.” His voice cracks. “I’m not—”

“ _Crowley,_ ” this Aziraphale says, voice so perfectly gentle and _insistent_ that the demon’s heart rends, and he takes another step back, silencing the sudden, horrible yearning he feels spill beneath his skin. “Everything is alright, this is—”

“No,” Crowley says. “No, it is _not_ alright, none of this is alright, _this isn’t my world!”_

He hasn’t screamed, not properly, in several decades, and it scalds like scripture in his throat. The angel in front of him clamps his mouth shut, and Crowley continues to yell because the sound of his name in the angel’s voice, like everything else, hurts even worse.

“None of this is right! I shouldn’t _be here!_ It’s not my time, it’s not my world! _My_ world is _ending, my_ time is over, and _my_ Aziraphale wants to _ssskewer me!_ ”   

His voice ends on a slippery, high-pitched note. The angel is still staring at him, but rather than horrified by Crowley’s hysteria, Aziraphale looks almost bemused _._

“It is hard to imagine any world where I would want that,” the angel says idly, and Crowley gawks.

“Yeah?” Crowley’s voice is hoarse. “Well. I might have deserved it. A little.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” the angel hums. “But perhaps I was stressed.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Crowley explains hollowly, swallowing hard. “Everyone is, a bit. S’alright.”

Again, the expression that the angel makes in response to Crowley’s words is all wrong for the situation at hand, but is merely another nail in the coffin of Crowley’s sanity when Aziraphale frowns and says, “The end of the world? Oh, yes, well, I suppose it was a difficult time, but I never once felt the urge to discorporate you. Well. Except for when you told me it was _you_ who lost Adam, but I was more _upset,_ really, and we all make mistakes, my dear.”

“...What,” Crowley says. Or rather, attempts to say, in a manner too strangled to be fully discerned.

“Armageddon isn’t truly the end of the world, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, with a small smile that, while intended to reassure, tears Crowley’s few remaining wits to shreds. “It’s just a...well, _near thing,_ with nobody the wiser but our sides, when it’s all said and done. About the only thing that ends with the End-Times is our relationships with Up and Downstairs, regrettably.” The angel grimaces. “They weren’t too pleased about our loyalty to humanity, I’m afraid; we’ve been struck from their good books and placed on their bad. Erhm. In red pen.” Very suddenly, Aziraphale pales and says, “Goodness, was I supposed to tell you that? I suppose if you’re from a different universe altogether, it shouldn’t matter what I tell you...Crowley, dear, in your world, do they still have clotted cream? It always seemed such a chance invention.”

The absurdity of the question brings Crowley, briefly, to lucidity. “It’s...not the end of the world?” he whispers.

Aziraphale smiles. “If nothing is too different in your world, then I should say not, my dear.”

“It seems pretty different to me,” Crowley says. Aziraphale’s eyes soften, too close to pity, and Crowley’s chest crumples like wet parchment. 

He has to know. Magic may have brought him here, and will likely send him back, but if this world—he has to know how different, or how close it really is, he has to _know._ He has to ask.

“Aziraphale,” he says. “Do you...” His voice breaks, dissolving. He can barely force the words out, but with effort, heart scraping up his insides, he says, “Do you remember Milan?”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows meet. “Milan...1630?” The angel presses his lips together, and Crowley’s heart skips a beat. “Unpleasant time. The plague had returned. The war over God and land—our sides, they’d hoped it might mean something more. Meddling and inciting on both sides, causing trouble. Fighting dirty, I believe the phrase is. We left together, once we ran into one another—wasn’t worth the trouble of staying. We went to Crete, then...the Grecian islands were....” The angel exhales longingly, breathing out memories, and frowns. “Why?”

Crowley can’t breathe. There is barbed wire around his lungs, around his heart, and with every heavy beat he bleeds. He—they never—this world, this future is real, somehow born of the fires of his deepest regrets, everything he’s ever wanted given form and—

Aziraphale is standing in front of him, with a light and love that sears. _Why?_ The question is empty, smothered beneath the weight of years of grief and want.  

He doesn’t deserve this. Whatever it is, it isn’t for him.

He can’t be here.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. _Run._ “I can’t—”

He reaches for what he needs, and closes his hand over a familiar set of keys.

“Crowley—”

“I can’t be here,” he says, robbed of oxygen and sense. His vision is blurred. He’s suffocating, the sulfur ash of despair filling his lungs and coating his insides. 

Aziraphale’s eyes fly wide. “You’re not—” 

“ _Don’t.”_ He clicks the key, summoning the car, and hears it chirp from outside the window. _Escape. Run._

Faster than Aziraphale can catch him, Crowley moves to the window, lifting the latch and pulling back the glass panel, and without bothering to look for mortals below, he steps to the sill and jumps.

“ _Crowley!”_

Aziraphale’s shocked voice volleys after him as he lands hard in his Santoni’s. London is dark and the Bentley is glossy black in the low city light, and he dives for the driver’s door like a life-line. He starts the car with the digging of his nails into the steering wheel, and the distinctive sound of what can only be invisible, intangible wings cuts through the roar of the engine. Aziraphale, now standing on the wet cobblestone, leans into the driver’s window with a stricken look on his face. 

“Crowley, _wait_ —”

“Don’t follow me, angel,” he growls, in agony, and guns it. 

Crowley leaves the angel in his rearview, barreling into the night with no destination, and doesn’t turn back for fear of seeing his greatest sin staring back at him.

* * *

_changed London, 1990_

The Bentley is flying beneath his feet, a behemoth of steel and channeled desperation. He’s driving with the same blinding, time-bending speed, pedal to the floor, from when he thought the world was coming to an end six months ago, and here he is all over again, except this time, it’s worse.

It’s worse because he knows the Apocalypse will pass without a blip on the radar of history, and because the only thing important to him in his world—the only thing, other than all of humanity—that he gives a damn about is another world away, and in danger from his bloody _evil twin._

“Erhm,” this world’s Angel says beside him, distinctly uncomfortable. “Is this music really necessary?”

It’s playing Queen—naturally—and specifically, _A Night at the Opera,_ and it’s a tune that Crowley knows he only voluntarily listens to when he’s feeling the itchiest kind of maudlin. But what does he know of the warped mind of doppel-Crowley? He’s had enough of bloody prophecies for today regardless, and with a growl he punches the eject button on the tape and bends towards the glovebox to rummage for _literally_ anything else.

“Watch the road!” Anathema cries from the back, voice skyrocketing through several octaves, and when Crowley scoffs and swerves around a lorry, the Newt boy shrieks.

“Crowley,” the angel-that-isn’t-his says worryingly from the passenger.

“ _Ha,_ ” Crowley replies, in victory, as he finds the last cassette not yet transmogrified into _Jazz,_ and swears loudly when he sees it’s American music, and _slow rock_ at that.

“What kind of knob keeps the Eagles in his car during the Heaven-damned apocalypse?” he hisses, leaning harder on the gas pedal in his anger. The Bentley groans beneath them, pushing harder against physics with loyal abandon. Cursing, he jams it into the player and stabs ‘play’, because anything, _anything_ is better than thinking about another him, a monstrous version, a _proper_ demon amok in his world with his Aziraphale _vulnerable-_

_“...One of these nights, one of these crazy old nights—”_

The beat’s way too damn slow, uneasy and almost uncanny as the world blurs past his windows, but it’s better than nothing. He cranks up the volume to drown out the fear clogging his thoughts, clenching his jaw. 

“Erhm...Crowley,” Aziraphale says again, and he hates, he _hates_ how this Aziraphale says his name, like it’s unfamiliar, with no level certainty or strength. It’s _wrong,_ all wrong, but he can’t think about it, he needs to get to the airbase and get _home._

“Crowley—”

“ _What,”_ he snaps, and almost regrets it when the angel stiffens. _Don’t think about it, don’t think about it—_

_“You got your demons, you’ve got desire—”_

“Must we—”

“The faster we get there, the faster this is over with,” Crowley interrupts. “Just fireproof Simon and Garfunkel back there, and I’ll take care of the rest, got it?”

_“Oooh, someone to be kind to, in between the dark and the light—”_

Crowley grits his teeth. Stupid bloody prophecies follow you everywhere, he’d almost forgotten that. Damn hard things to throw off. 

“What exactly are we going to do?” Anathema asks from the back, sliding into Pulscifer in his rearview as they round a tight corner.

“You two will go inside the base. Shut off the systems. He knows how.” Crowley points in the mirror.

“I do?”

“The angel and I will go to Adam. Fifteen minutes tops, then _you’re sending me back.”_ He menaces the rearview, and when he finds only defiance in the witch’s eyes, huffs and wills the Bentley to go faster. The aircon vents begin the leak the smell of burning rubber. 

“ _Oooh, loneliness will bind you, in between the wrong and right...”_

“Shit,” he whispers. “Shit. Aziraphale, you better be fine.” _Please be safe. Kill him if you have to._

_“Oooh, coming right behind you, swear I’m gonna find you, one of these nights—”_

“Do you think—” Aziraphale’s voice, however strange it may sound, still tugs at his attention. The angel at his side swallows, throat working. “Do you think he’ll...hurt him? ...Crowley?”

“What do you care?” Crowley asks. “You don’t hate him? And don't give me that company line about angels not hating anything, you said he was dangerous!”

Aziraphale’s face drains, and his lips press into a thin line. “...He is,” the angel says finally, voice quiet. Crowley stares at him, and after years of memorizing that face, he realizes what he sees. Something beyond angelic, benevolent love for all things, and tainted in misery. _Fuck. Buggering, blessed fuck._

“That _bastard,_ ” Crowley breathes. Rage seethes in his chest, a black and poisonous thing. This world’s Crowley is more than a devil, he’s a _fool._ Aziraphale blinks rapidly, eyes shining as he turns his chin away, and Crowley whips his head to the side, agitated. 

“Any version of me that wouldn’t—idiot. _Idiot._ ” His voice dissolves into a wordless snarl, incoherent with judgement and hatred. Self-hatred, in a form, filling his mouth with venom and mercury.  “You’re lucky he’s not here, or I’d kill him. Is he some useless lackey? Some thoughtless, sniveling, bootlicking lout under Hastur, torturing souls for the thrill of it?”  

Aziraphale is staring at him again, now with a foggy sort of disbelief. “Not…exactly. He said—before the spell, he said he wanted to help us. To stop the Apocalypse.”

“Didn’t believe him, then?”

A beat, and Crowley spares a glance to watch grey seep over the angel’s face. “...I don’t know,” Aziraphale says. His voice is painfully soft, a few notes removed from hollow. He swallows again, hard.  “I’ve been wrong before.”

Crowley feels his heart twist, and he can’t fight the impulse that seizes hold of him. He reaches out, hand finding the angel’s wrist and closing over it.

“Angel,” he says quietly, consoling before he’s even realized it, and he nearly swallows his tongue when he remembers himself. The angel in the passenger is frozen, expression paralyzed, staring at the fingers around his wrist. Crowley drops his grip as if burned and jerks his gaze back to the road, sinking his teeth into the meat of his cheek. _Stupid, stupid, he’s not yours._

“What the hell is that?” a voice says from the back, and the moment breaks as Crowley lifts his head to the dash. Outside his window, the sky is burning. The M25 is a blaze, towering a league into the air, and fleetingly Crowley is back in his Bentley, six months ago, full of terror and mad resolution to save the world or, likelier, perish trying.

Beside him, Aziraphale’s face is cast in the orange of hellfire, mouth open in awe. Crowley’s heart thuds hard, and sets his jaw.

“Alright, children,” he says through his teeth. “It’s going to get hot in here.”

“I’ve got them,” Aziraphale says beside him, and his eyes are closing in concentration. Crowley looks at him, and nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand grips tightly around his arm. He opens his mouth to speak—to say _Aziraphale,_ or remind the angel he needs no miracle to survive hell’s fire, but realizes rather quickly that Aziraphale has no such assurance.

“I won’t let the flames enter,” he says sharply. “They won’t touch you.”

Aziraphale’s blue eyes open, finding his. The hunted, fearful look in those eyes is at odds to the set of the angel’s jaw, and still the angel sits in the seat. Heading into what might be his painful, eternal doom.

“I promise, angel,” Crowley says. Aziraphale’s gaze seems to dig into Crowley’s stained and shadowed grace, and for a moment, the angel looks like _his._ Fingers tighten on his arm, resolute, and the angel nods, eyes closing again.

Crowley nods, and sets his gaze straight ahead with his heart in his throat. As they come up on the wall of flames, he puts his own will into power.

_This car will stay together, this car will stay together._

_No flames of Hell will enter this car._

They make it through to the other side. When they barrel past a police car and a bobby that drops his donut, Aziraphale’s hand stays gripped around Crowley’s jacket sleeve, and doesn’t loosen until they’re to Tadfield, racing to the base, and finally climbing out of the Bentley’s flaming ruins.

“C’mon, then,” Crowley says roughly, as the angel and humans delicately maneuver out of a car that is more molten metal than automobile. “Let’s get this sorted.” He takes the tire iron from the ground, thumbing soot off the chrome just as before, and a fear pangs at his heart. He's facing Satan alone, now.

And Aziraphale...

 _Just a few more minutes, angel,_ he thinks. It might even be a prayer _. Stay out of trouble until then._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the dramatic saga of aziraphales and crowleys continues
> 
> the song i cite gratuitously in this chap is 'one of these nights' by the eagles. it's summer time, babey.

**Author's Note:**

> yes the title and chapter headings will be queen songs/lyrics and no i'm not sorry
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Lmk what you think in the comments or @apprenticeofdoyle on tumblr.
> 
> I'm also on this amazing go fic discord, so if you like the fic, come talk to me about it!!! (And maybe talk to other go authors!!) -- https://discord.gg/de8eGSS


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